(Photo by Orion Pictures/ Courtesy: Everett Collection. ROBOCOP 3.)
Jaws. The Karate Kid. Speed. Paul Blart: Mall Cop. All classic movies obviously. What’s also binding them together is the fact they’ve all had terrible sequels. These forlorn follow-ups are below 10% on the Tomatometer and we’ve rounded them up, and other movies like them, for our guide to the 56 worst sequels of all time.
Police Academy has an impressive run with not only half the franchise appearing on this list, but all of them having the same goose egg Tomatometer score. A majority of the Atlas Shrugged trilogy is here. And when we said there should only be on Highlander, we dang well meant it. And expect to see horror franchises debase themselves, with dreadful follow-ups to Jaws, Halloween, The Ring, Return of the Living Dead and more.
Most recently, we’ve added the 365 Days sequels, which both match the original’s 0% Tomatometer. With this ignoble distinction, 365 Days becomes the worst-reviewed trilogy ever, overcoming the Atlas Shrugged films without consent.
Now, get ready for some brand name disappointment with the worst sequels of all time!
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At 48% on the Tomatometer, Snow White and The Huntsman didn’t clear many critical benchmarks in the fantasy genre back in 2012. But The Huntsman: Winter’s War, its Kristen Stewart-less prequel, looks like it’ll fall even shorter, inspiring this week’s 24 Frames gallery: 24 worst fantasy movie sequels (or prequels, or sidequels, or spinoffs, or…) by Tomatometer!
Meanwhile…Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice isn’t the only sequel coming out this week! Nia Vardalos and her Portokalos brood are back with a big family secret in the follow-up to My Big Fat Greek Wedding, a word-of-mouth smash that made hundreds of millions of dollars when it was first released. But we’re a long ways away from 2002 now and just how much demand for a sequel was built up in-between? This question inspires this week’s gallery: 24 sequels nobody asked for (and how they turned out)!
People love to laugh at Segways, mall cops, and mustaches, and the box office receipts for 2009’s Paul Blart: Mall Cop offer more than $180 million worth of proof. This weekend, Kevin James jumps back into the line of fire in the descriptively titled Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, and although we applaud him for refusing to argue with success, we somehow doubt critics will be willing to give this movie the same amount of slack — and with that in mind, we went about assembling a list of some of the worst-reviewed Number Twos in cinematic history. Roll up your sleeves and hold your nose, because we’re droppin’ deuces Total Recall style!
Caddyshack is a comedy classic that virtually hums with the madcap energy thrown off by director Harold Ramis and his incredible cast, a marvelously motley bunch that included Rodney Dangerfield, Ted Knight, Bill Murray, and Chevy Chase. Naturally, the sequel brought back virtually no one who’d been involved the first time around, limiting the classic Caddyshack vibes to a supporting appearance from Chase and a new song from Kenny Loggins on the soundtrack. This might not have been such a bad thing if these crucial absences had been filled by the right people or a suitably funny storyline, but director Allan Arkush was presented with a cobbled-together script that virtually reprised the original and asked Jackie Mason to serve as a Dangerfield facsimile with Robert Stack as Knight’s proxy. Audiences saw through the flimsy carbon copy and so did critics; the result was, as Steven Rea wrote for the Philadelphia Inquirer, “a sight not to behold.”
20th Century Fox had 190 million reasons for making a sequel to 2003’s Cheaper by the Dozen, but none of them had anything to do with unanswered questions or compelling plot lines left dangling in the story’s conclusion — as amply demonstrated throughout 2005’s Cheaper by the Dozen 2, which reunited much of the original cast (including Steve Martin and Bonnie Hunt in the increasingly thankless roles of bumbling family patriarch and matriarch) in order to pit them against another comically outsized brood led by Eugene Levy and Carmen Electra. Audiences turned out again, but critics were unmoved. “Cheaper by the Dozen 2 is so incredibly bland and by the numbers it’s painful to watch,” seethed ComingSoon’s Joshua Starnes. “It’s just a collection of unfunny moments that are both uninteresting and annoying.”
Here is where we pause for a moment to consider the career trajectory of Cuba Gooding, Jr., whose Academy Award for Jerry Maguire was followed by appearances in a string of increasingly ill-advised duds that grew to include Snow Dogs, Boat Trip, and the Razzie-winning Radio — and reached its arguable nadir with 2007’s Daddy Day Camp. A sequel to 2003’s Eddie Murphy-led Daddy Day Care, only without Murphy or anyone else viewers might have remembered from that film, it was essentially an excuse to film 89 minutes of our beleaguered Oscar-winning hero mugging for the camera and/or getting whacked in the family jewels. “Never work with children or animals,” warned the BBC’s Jamie Russell. “Unless you’re a child or an animal, in which case, never work with Cuba Gooding, Jr.”
The original Highlander, starring Christopher Lambert and Sean Connery as members of an immortal race who travel around the world chopping each other’s heads off, offered the sort of delightfully preposterous sci-fi/fantasy fun that only comes from hiring a legendary Scottish actor to play a character named Juan Sánchez Villa-Lobos Ramírez. Cult status naturally followed, making 1991’s Highlander II: The Quickening something of a foregone conclusion; alas, the scatterbrained script — which begins with Lambert’s character promising his dying wife that he’ll fix a hole in the ozone layer and only gets weirder and more convoluted from there — made these Highlander hijinks all but impossible to enjoy. “Highlander 2: The Quickening is the most hilariously incomprehensible movie I’ve seen in many a long day,” wrote Roger Ebert, deeming it “a movie almost awesome in its badness.”
Eight years after Richard Kelly’s Donnie Darko started its journey to cult classic status, the story continued with S. Darko — a sequel that Kelly publicly informed fans he had absolutely nothing to do with. Without his singular vision dreaming up new narrative twists and turns, things turned out about as well as one might expect; although Daveigh Chase returned to reprise her role as Samantha Darko, the movie around her had trace amounts of the form and little of the function that propelled the original to midnight movie glory. “I love Donnie Darko. It is ominous, funny, replete with … well-observed moments,” wrote Jordan Hoffman for UGO. “S. Darko is a callous attempt to cash in on its well-earned appreciation.”
The poster’s tagline promised “the next generation of mischief,” but Son of the Mask was really just another feeble attempt by a studio to cash in on a hit movie by filming a sequel without the involvement of the original star. Part of the same glum tradition as such afternoon basic cable schedule-fillers as Smokey and the Bandit Part III, Curse of the Pink Panther, and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas, 2005’s Son of the Mask vainly attempts to wring madcap laughs out of a story involving a sad-sack cartoonist (Jamie Kennedy) who stumbles into possession of the same magical totem from The Mask and ends up siring a son who’s been gifted with the power of Loki. It’s all very silly without ever being funny — kind of like the notion that a sequel to The Mask would make money without Jim Carrey. “Sequels without their original stars are usually sent direct to video. Some deserve better,” observed Garth Franklin for Dark Horizons. “This isn’t one of those.”
It’s pretty much a given that the reviews for a sequel will be more unkind than those for its predecessor, but even in the context of the law of diminishing returns, Speed 2: Cruise Control is an appalling anomaly: its 3 percent Tomatometer stands in almost inverse opposition to the 93 percent that Speed earned in 1994. Of course, given that the original was a standalone story that did absolutely nothing to ask for a sequel (besides earning hundreds of millions of dollars), it stood to reason that critics and viewers would be less than excited by the prospect of another chapter — especially given that Speed star Keanu Reeves bowed out, leaving co-star Sandra Bullock to muddle her way through a thankless follow-up that put her and new male lead Jason Patric on a boat (instead of a bus) trying to foil madman Willem Dafoe (instead of Dennis Hopper). “Speed cost something like $30 million; this sequel cost four times as much,” pointed out the A.V. Club’s Stephen Thompson. “So why is it such a feeble, aimless piece of junk in comparison?”
There’s something almost noble about the way this belated and belabored follow-up to Saturday Night Fever came together — not only in the face of common sense and good taste, but well beyond the box-office run of the original and the shelf life of the musical trend that turned the soundtrack into such a sensation. All of which is to say that a Fever sequel in 1983 probably wouldn’t have been a big hit no matter what, but when you add into the equation Sylvester Stallone directing from a script he co-wrote, a storyline that does essentially nothing with main character Tony Manero (John Travolta), and a soundtrack album whose second side consists of songs written and/or recorded by Stallone’s brother Frank… well, you’ve got yourself one of the biggest, sweatiest dancefloor duds of the decade. “It all amounts,” wrote TV Guide’s Movie Guide, “to an embarrassing show of unrestrained, Hollywood-style egomania.”
How do you go from winning seven Academy Awards and racking up nearly $160 million (in 1973!) to getting universally dumped on by critics and eking out less than $7 million with your follow-up? Well, you can start by taking 10 years between movies, ditching the original’s stars, and basing the sequel on a script that — while written by the fellow responsible for the first installment — mistakes intricate wit for thick exposition and club-footed twists. Case in point: The Sting II, which attempted to recapture the magic of The Sting by subbing in Jackie Gleason and Mac Davis for Robert Redford and Paul Newman. That’s probably all anyone needs to say about this limp retread, but let us close by quoting a few words of backhanded praise from Radio Times’ Tom Hutchinson, who wrote, “Oliver Reed and Karl Malden are welcome presences, and Teri Garr is the winner on all feminine counts, but this isn’t enough to save it.”
Jon Voight is a very famous, highly respected actor, but he also has bills to pay, which may explain how he ended up alongside Scott Baio and Vanessa Angel playing second fiddle to a diaper-clad quartet in Superbabies: Baby Geniuses 2. Then again, if you take Voight at his word, he chose the project because “When you look around the world, everybody’s really in a fearful state in some way, and kids are getting that, they’re getting that fear, and they need to be given a kind of empowerment in some sense” — but no, you know what? We prefer the “bills to pay” explanation. Either way, this alleged action comedy about an evil media mogul who’s out to kidnap four freakishly smart toddlers has gone down as one of the more shockingly awful stinkers to seep out of Hollywood in recent memory — as well as, sadly, the final effort from Porky’s director Bob Clark. “The first Baby Geniuses, released in 1999, was one of the most inane, humorless, ill-conceived, poorly acted comedies of the year,” wrote Jean Oppenheimer for the New Times. “As difficult as it is to imagine, the sequel is even worse.”
Finally, here’s a clip from one of the most infamous part twos of all time:
Wow, things are getting a little nasty around that Peter Jackson / New Line / "The Hobbit" / lawsuit story. New Line Cinema chief Bob Shaye recently spoke pretty candidly regarding his feelings for the man who gave him the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. Basically, Pete’s not welcome around New Line anymore.
According to IGN Movies, here’s what Shaye had to say about Peter Jackson: ""He got a quarter of a billion dollars paid to him so far, justifiably, according to contract, completely right, and this guy, who already has received a quarter of a billion dollars, turns around without wanting to have a discussion with us and sues us and refuses to discuss it unless we just give in to his plan. I don’t want to work with that guy anymore. Why would I? So the answer is he will never make any movie with New Line Cinema again while I’m still working for the company."
Wow, so does this mean Peter Jackson won’t be directing stuff like "Son of the Mask" or "Dumb and Dumberer" anytime soon? Darn.
So what does this ultimately MEAN in relation to a movie version of "The Hobbit"? Well it seems like one of two things is bound to happen:
1. New Line, presently working against the clock as far as its right to the property goes, can go into production with a new director, writer … and probably a bunch of new actors.
2. MGM and Saul Zaentz get the rights back if New Line doesn’t make the movie in time, which means they’d probably get to make the movie with Jackson and whatever other studio wants to help bankroll the project.
Ugh, how’d this all get so complicated? Oh yeah, the accusation of unpaid debts and a nasty lawsuit. That’s how.
Remember what happened when someone tried to do a "Dumb & Dumber" sequel without Jim Carrey? How about when they slapped together a Carrey-deficient sequel to "The Mask"? You think those would be a pair of solid lessons learned right there, eh? Guess again. Here comes a Carrey-free "Ace Ventura 3."
From The Hollywood Reporter: "Morgan Creek has begun the detective work on a kooky cold case. The production company has hired Jeff Sank and brothers Jason and Justin Heimberg to write a third installment of the hit franchise "Ace Ventura." The two previous "Ventura" comedies — 1994’s "Ace Ventura: Pet Detective" and the following year’s "Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls" — grossed more than $180 million domestically and helped establish Jim Carrey as one of the highest-paid comedy actors in Hollywood. The latest pet project is expected to center on the eccentric detective’s son, who steps into his father’s shoes to take over the family business."
Ooh boy, the "eccentric son sequel" routine. Let’s hope this one’s as good as "Son of the Pink Panther."
With Peter Dinklage recently signed to play the nefarious Simon Barsinister, the "Underdog" producers needed to find an actor to provide a voice for the canine crime-fighter. So they did. They got Jason Lee.
According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Have no fear, the voice of Underdog is here. "My Name Is Earl" star Jason Lee is lending his voice for the title character of "Underdog," Spyglass Entertainment and Walt Disney Pictures’ live-action adaptation of the classic 1960s cartoon. "Underdog" followed the adventures of a humble dog named Shoeshine Boy who became the superheroic Underdog, who spoke in rhyme. In the movie, he is adopted by a 12-year-old boy and uses his superpower to protect his love, Polly Purebred, and the citizens of Capitol City from the evil Simon Barsinister."
The guy who directed "Racing Stripes" is at the helm here. Keep your fingers crossed.
Fans of bad movies have The Stinkers and The Razzies to look forward to every year, and now that the latter organization has announced their winners, we can put this issue to bed and enjoy the next ten months of cinematic ineptitude.
2005 Razzie Awards Winners
Worst Picture: "Dirty Love"
Worst Actor: Rob Schneider, "Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo"
Worst Actress: Jenny McCarthy, "Dirty Love"
Worst Supporting Actor: Hayden Christensen, "Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith"
Worst Supporting Actress: Paris Hilton, "House of Wax"
Worst Screen Couple: Will Ferrell & Nicole Kidman, "Bewitched"
Worst Sequel: "Son of the Mask"
Worst Screenplay: Jenny McCarthy, "Dirty Love"
Worst Director: John Asher, "Dirty Love"
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Yeah, so apparently they really hated the fish-in-a-barrel-ish "Dirty Love." For the rest of the winners/losers, head on over to the Razzies site.
Sure, everyone’s psyched for the Oscars this Sunday night (yes, even the movie snobs who claim to hate the Oscars), but let’s kick the weekend off with an awards presentation that’s a little less … highbrow. If you followed our advice last week, then you’ve already cast your ballot for JoBlo’s Golden Schmoe Awards. Now check out the winners!
Favorite Movie: Batman Begins
Worst Movie: Son of the Mask
Best Director: Miller & Rodriguez, Sin City
Best Screenplay: Haggis & Moresco, Crash
Most Overrated: Brokeback Mountain
Most Underrated: Serenity
Best Comedy: The 40-Year-Old Virgin
Best Horror: Saw 2
Best Animated: Wallace & Gromit in The Curse of the Were-Rabbit
Best Sci-Fi: Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith
Best Special Effects: King Kong
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For the rest of the awards (29 in all!), hop on over to JoBlo’s and check out the goods.
Low budget horror film “Alone in the Dark” took home the industry’s biggest booby prize as Hollywood’s annual anti-Oscars, The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards, dished out awards in 24 competition categories. The dishonors came courtesy of the Los Angeles-based Bad Cinema Society, a panel of movie critics and film fans which annually awards Hollywood’s worst films and performances.
Though “Alone in the Dark” didn’t receive the most awards, it managed to beat the field in four major categories, including worst film of the year, worst director (Uwe Boll, who some critics and fans have likened to legendary bad movie maker Ed Wood), worst actress (Tara Reid), and worst special effects.
The top award winner for 2005, with five Stinkers, was “Son of the Mask,” New Line’s ill-conceived follow-up to the Jim Carrey mega-hit “The Mask.” The mind-numbing sequel, which was inexplicably still produced after Carrey refused to participate in the project, took honors for Worst Actor (Jamie Kennedy), Worst Sequel, and Worst Couple (Kennedy and anyone forced to co-star with him). The film was also named 2005’s foulest family film.
Jessica Simpson picked up three awards for her portrayal of Daisy Duke in the big screen remake of the TV series “The Dukes of Hazzard.” Her warbling of “These Boot Are Made For Walkin’” earned her a Stinker for worst song in a movie. She was also named worst supporting actress of the year and can lay claim to having sported the most annoying fake accent in a movie.
Media target Paris Hilton, who had a small role in the horror remake “House of Wax,” came away unscathed by the society. Mentioned as a worst supporting actress on other year-end lists, the hotel heiress did not make the final cut on the more selective Stinkers ballot. "To get on the Stinkers ballot you are judged on your performance, not your tabloid persona,” said Stinkers Bad Movie Awards co-founder Michael Lancaster. “Anyone that would put Paris Hilton on a list of the five worst supporting actresses in 2005 didn’t see a lot of movies in 2005."
The Stinkers ballot featured five worst film candidates that any other year would have been winners or at the very least runners-up in their own right. Proof positive that 2005 will go down as one of the worst film years on record. One category (worst song) had ten nominees, tying a Stinker record. “Hollywood just doesn’t seem to understand that what’s keeping paying customers away is the bad product they hype. You can’t just keep advertising that bad films are the funniest films of the year. Eventually the lies will catch up with you,” said Bad Cinema Society co-founder Ray Wright. He warned that 2006 was gearing up to be more of the same. “We’ve already had another film by Uwe Boll [BloodRayne] released and we will be all over ‘The Pink Panther.’”
With more than 50 sequels and remakes lined up for release in the next year, it’s safe to say that Hollywood has run out of ideas.” Added Lancaster, “I think the public has finally caught on to what we’ve been saying for years — that a lot of what Hollywood sells is not worth the price of an admission ticket. I love that people are avoiding some of these overhyped films like the plague.”
Lancaster and Wright say the film that earned the most Stinkers for 2005 (“Son of the Mask”) is a perfect example of a Hollywood system gone horribly wrong. “I can’t for the life of me imagine how this project got approved. I think the minute Jim Carrey passes on this you say, ‘let’s not make the sequel.’ Now I guess we can all see how New Line is spending their ‘Lord of the Rings’ profits,” said Lancaster.
The Stinkers Bad Movie Awards have been featured in Entertainment Weekly, USA TODAY, the Los Angeles Times, and on the BBC, CNN, as well as in a slew of regional and international newspapers and magazines. The group’s website has received nearly two million hits.
Complete list of winners and nominees for 2005:
WORST FILM
Alone in the Dark
WORST SENSE OF DIRECTION (Stop them before they direct again!)
Uwe Boll (Alone in the Dark)
WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A LEADING ROLE
Jamie Kennedy (Son of the Mask)
WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A LEADING ROLE
Tara Reid (Alone in the Dark)
WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTOR IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Tyler Perry (as Madea) (Diary of a Mad Black Woman)
WORST PERFORMANCE BY AN ACTRESS IN A SUPPORTING ROLE
Jessica Simpson (The Dukes of Hazzard)
WORST SCREENPLAY FOR A FILM GROSSING MORE THAN $100 MILLION*
*using Hollywood math
Fantastic Four
MOST PAINFULLY UNFUNNY COMEDY
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
WORST SONG OR SONG PERFORMANCE IN A FILM OR ITS END CREDITS
These Boots Are Made For Walkin’ (Jessica Simpson) (The Dukes of Hazzard)
MOST INTRUSIVE MUSICAL SCORE
Son of the Mask
LESS THAN DYNAMIC DUO
Samuel L. Jackson and Eugene Levy (The Man)
WORST ON-SCREEN COUPLE
Jamie Kennedy and anyone forced to co-star with him (Son of the Mask)
MOST ANNOYING FAKE ACCENT
MALE: Norm MacDonald (Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo)
FEMALE: Jessica Simpson (The Dukes of Hazzard)
LEAST "SPECIAL" SPECIAL EFFECTS
Alone in the Dark
WORST REMAKE
Yours, Mine and Ours
WORST SEQUEL
Son of the Mask
WORST RESURRECTION OF A "CLASSIC" TV SERIES
The Honeymooners
THE SPENCER BRESLIN AWARD (FOR WORST PERFORMANCE BY A CHILD)
Adrian Alonso (The Legend of Zorro)
WORST CHILD ENSEMBLE
Yours, Mine and Ours
FOULEST FAMILY FILM
Son of the Mask
LEAST SCARY HORROR MOVIE
The Fog
MOST OVERRATED FILM
Syriana
WORST ANIMATED FILM
Chicken Little
For full nominee lists and more awards, stop by the Stinkers official website!
Courtesy of their official site come the annual Razzie Awards Nominations … or as I like to call them: The Amazingly Obvious Fish in a Barrel Nominations in Which We Savage People We Don’t Like, Regardless of the Quality of Their Work. Oh, and it seems the Razzers have decided to branch out an include a "Most Tiresome" category, which I happen to find pretty ironic.
26th Annual Golden Raspberry (RAZZIE®) Award Nominations
WORST PICTURE
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Dirty Love
The Dukes of Hazzard
House of Wax
Son of the Mask
WORST ACTOR
Tom Cruise / War of the Worlds
Will Ferrell / Bewitched and Kicking & Screaming
Jamie Kennedy / Son of the Mask
The Rock / Doom
Rob Schneider / Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
WORST ACTRESS
Jessica Alba / Fantastic Four and Into the Blue
Hilary Duff / Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and The Perfect Man
Jennifer Lopez / Monster in Law
Jenny McCarthy / Dirty Love
Tara Reid / Alone in the Dark
MOST TIRESOME TABLOID TARGETS
(New Category, Saluting the Celebs We’re ALL Sick & Tired Of!)
Tom Cruise & His Anti-Psychiatry Rant
Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, Oprah Winfrey‘s Couch, The Eiffel Tower & “Tom’s Baby”
Paris Hilton and…Who-EVER!
Mr. & Mrs. Britney, Their Baby & Their Camcorder
The Simpsons: Ashlee, Jessica & Nick
WORST SUPPORTING ACTOR
Hayden Christensen / Star Wars III: No Sith, He’s Supposed to Be Darth Vader?!?!
Alan Cumming / Son of the Mask
Bob Hoskins / Son of the Mask
Eugene Levy / Cheaper by the Dozen 2 and The Man
Burt Reynolds / The Dukes of Hazzard and The Longest Yard
WORST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
Carmen Electra / Dirty Love
Paris Hilton / House of Wax
Katie Holmes / Batman Begins
Ashlee Simpson / Undiscovered
Jessica Simpson / The Dukes of Hazzard
WORST SCREEN COUPLE
Will Ferrell & Nicole Kidman / Bewitched
Jamie Kennedy & ANYBODY Stuck Sharing the Screen with Him / Son of the Mask
Jenny McCarthy & ANYONE Dumb Enough to Befriend or Date Her / Dirty Love
Rob Schneider & His Diapers / Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Jessica Simpson & Her “Daisy Dukes” / The Dukes of Hazzard
WORST REMAKE OR SEQUEL
Bewitched
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
The Dukes of Hazzard
House of Wax
Son of the Mask
WORST DIRECTOR
John Asher / Dirty Love
Uwe Boll / Alone in the Dark
Jay Chandrasekhar / The Dukes of Hazzard
Nora Ephron / Bewitched
Lawrence Guterman / Son of the Mask
WORST SCREENPLAY
Bewitched
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo
Dirty Love
The Dukes of Hazzard Written
Son of the Mask
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My apologies to the Razz Crew, but I think they could put a lot more effort into their nominations. And maybe learn to tell the difference between "bad performances" and "stuff we just feel like ranting about." (And perhaps stop nominating one person for multiple performances, because then it just becomes obvious that you’re gunning for someone. Example: They hated Ferrell in the witch comedy and the soccer flick, but they loved his work in "The Producers?" Phooey.)
Am I too harsh? Are the Razzies really cool and I’m just a crotchety old whiner? Quite possible.
This week at the movies brings four studies in aviation. What happens when you’re trapped on a plane with a creepy seatmate? (See "Red Eye.") Is it ever too late for Cupid’s arrows to take flight? (Check out "The 40 Year-Old Virgin.") Were the unsung heroes of the Allies in WWII… pigeons? ("Valiant," this one’s for you.) Isn’t it cool when those Supercross dudes, like, totally go up in the air, and like, for a few seconds, y’know, it looks like they’re, like, flying? (Ahem…."Supercross: The Movie.") And most important of all: which of these flicks will fly with the critics?
Alfred Hitchcock once famously declared, "I like to play the audience like a piano." Wes Craven is no Hitchcock (who is?), but in his finest moments, his work embodies the spirit of that sentiment. And critics say "Red Eye" is one of Craven’s finest moments. Much like many of Hitch’s films, the plot strains credibility, but who cares; brisk, paranoid, and tense, this is excellent popcorn fare, with stars in the making Rachel McAdams and Cillian Murphy getting their share of props. "Red Eye" soars, scoring 84 percent on the Tomatometer. And it’s Craven’s best reviewed film since "Scream" (87 percent) in 1996.
Speaking of overdue props, Steve Carell has been stealing scenes from movies for a while (and he was in those weirdly funny FedEx commercials — am I the only one who remembers that?). So now that he’s getting his shot in the spotlight, he’s unsurprisingly making the most of it. Critics are showing a lot of love for "The 40 Year-Old Virgin," a film that continues the recent trend of mixing tasteless humor with aching sincerity. At 85 percent, "The 40 Year-Old Virgin" may be worth a date. And it’s getting better reviews than even the surprise comedy megahit of the summer, "Wedding Crashers" (currently at 74 percent).
So CGI is the wave of the future? Maybe. But technology can only go so far; a movie still has to tell a compelling story. Critics say even the technology isn’t that good in "Valiant," a tale of carrier pigeons’ heroism in WWII. And though it features voice work from some of our favorites from across the pond (Ewan McGregor, Ricky Gervais, John Cleese, Hugh Laurie), the writers say it’s plucky but impersonal, and too odd in its plot to make much sense to younger viewers, the assumed target demographic. At 24 percent on the Tomatometer, this bird’s having trouble achieving takeoff. And it’s the worst-reviewed CGI film ever, sinking lower than last year’s "Shark Tale" (35 percent).
Since there is apparently little appeal in "Segway: The Movie" or, perhaps "Jet-Ski: The Movie," X-treme fans will have to make do with "Supercross: The Movie." But according to critics, there couldn’t be much less appeal to this teen romance in between totally radical and tubular stunts. The reason old-school exclamations make sense in this context is that the plot of this movie is pretty dated; heck, "Don’t Worry Baby," the classic Beach Boys song about romance and drag racing, pretty much told the same story in three minutes. But "Supercross" does soar above the competition in one respect: at three percent on the Tomatometer, it’s among the worst reviewed movies of the year.
Worst Reviewed Movies of 2005 (So Far):
—————————————
1. King’s Ransom — 0%
2. Alone in the Dark — 1%
3. Supercross: The Movie — 3%
4. Son of the Mask — 4%
5. Modigliani — 4%
6. Fascination — 5%
7. Harry and Max — 5%
8. The Perfect Man — 6%
9. Elektra — 7%
10. White Noise — 9%
Recent Wes Craven-Directed Movies:
———————————–
14% — Cursed (2005)
41% — Scream 3 (2000)
68% — Music of the Heart (1999)
81% — Scream 2 (1997)
87% — Scream (1996)
Screenwriter Scot Armstrong, who co-wrote "Old School," "Road Trip," and "Starsky & Hutch" (as well as an uncredited re-write on "Elf") has been tapped by New Line to pen a sequel to the Will Ferrell Christmas comedy. And while Mr. Ferrell is not signed up for the follow-up just yet, New Line honcho Toby Emmerich is clearly not going to move forward without his curly-haired leading man.
According to Variety, "after the failure of "Son of the Mask," (Emmerich) has said he would go forward with pricey sequels only if original stars are involved." It’s also understood that Will is set to make about $20 million for his involvement in "Elf 2," so let’s hope that Mr. Armstrong puts together an impressive screenplay.
This was probably not the best movie weekend to coincide with The Academy Awards, which honored Hollywood’s best of 2004. Three of this weekend’s wide debuts were all below 17% on the Tomatometer. Two of them didn’t even have the guts to be screened for critics. However, one of them did claim the top spot at this weekend’s box office. As “Diary of a Mad, Black Woman” shows, no matter how bad the film, it’s probably better to screen it to critics anyways because of the additional publicity it’ll receive from critics’ reviews. “Diary of a Mad, Black Woman,” also has the extra benefit of Oprah’s recommendation on Jay Leno.
“Diary of a Mad Black Woman” rejected "Hitch" from top spot at the box office this Oscars weekend with an estimated $22.7M on only half the theaters. It’s per theater average of $15,307 is nearly three times that of the runner-up within films on the top 12. Lions Gate Films’s strategy to open it semi-wide paid off handsomely. Based on an immensely popular play by Tyler Perry, critics thought the film’s mix of slapstick, melodrama and spirituality lacks a consistent tone. It has a Tomatometer of just 17%.
In 2nd place this weekend is “Hitch,” which grossed an estimated $21M, off only 33% from last weekend. Will Smith’s first romantic comedy has grossed a total of $122M in just three weeks of release.
Keanu Reeves’s demonic thriller “Constantine” placed 3rd with an estimated $11.8M, off an ominous 60% from its debut last weekend. If it doesn’t hold up well in the following weeks, development of a sequel announced last week after its $34.6M Presidents’ Day weekend debut might be halted. Its total after two weeks is $50.8M.
In 4th and 5th place are a pair of films which debuted without critics’ advance screenings.
“Cursed” grossed an estimated $9.6M. It’s not bad, but just disappointing when you consider that it’s writen by Kevin Williamson and directed by Wes Craven, the duo who revitalize the horror genre with the Scream films. Critics thought its attempt to cater to a PG-13 audience diluted the film of any scares and suspense. It has a cursed 13% on the Tomatometer.
“Man of the House,” starring Tommy Lee Jones and Cedric the Entertainer, placed 5th with $9M. Again, it’s not great, but not bad when you consider that Revolution Studios sneaked this by critics and onto the unsuspecting public.
Rounding out the rest of the top 12 are this weekend’s big Oscar winner “Million Dollar Baby” with $7.2M ($64.7M total), “Because of Winn-Dixie” with $6.8M ($22.2M total), “Are We There Yet” with $4M ($76.4M total), “The Aviator” with $3.8M ($93.8M total), “Son of the Mask” with $3.8M ($14M total), “Sideways” with $3.5M ($53M total), and “The Wedding Date” with $2.1M ($28.9M total).
Because of the 77th Annual Academy Awards show this weekend, the total gross for the top 12 films fell 24% from the same weekend last year when “The Passion of the Christ” topped the charts with $83.8M. Alright, maybe “The Passion of the Christ” has just a little bit more to do with this weekend’s slump than the Oscars.
Even though the Will Smith-starrer "Hitch" experienced a 26% drop in its box office take from last weekend, it was still enough to hold off, if barely, Keanu Reeves‘ supernatural thriller "Constantine," to take the box office crown. "Hitch" made $31.8M while "Constantine" made $30.5M, over three days. "Constantine"’s per theater average is higher, however, at $10.2K vs. $8.9K for "Hitch." Kate DiCamillo’s novel "Because of Winn-Dixie" may find success as a novel, but as a movie, it has yet to find its audience, as it came in a distant third with a take of $10.9M. "The Mask" made upwards of $100M, but its sequel, "Son of Mask," will get nowhere near that amount, with its weekend take of $7.7M. No Jim Carrey? Big mistake. Clint Eastwood‘s Oscar contender, "Million Dollar Baby," rounds out the top five with a take of $7.2M.
This Presidents Day weekend, three wide release candidates vie for the public’s attendance at the box office – Keanu Reeve’s post-Matrix supernatural offering “Constantine,” the Jim Carrey-less sequel “Son of the Mask,” and an adaptation of a bestselling doggie tale “Because of Winn-Dixie.” With all three films opening ultra wide in an average of over 3000+ theaters across the nation, which do critics most recommend? The emphasis here is definitely on “most recommend” because all three didn’t fared favorably with critics.
Of the three, Constantine received the most recommendations with a Tomatometer of 48% (percentage of all print, broadcast, and online critics giving the film a favorable review) Based on a comic book, the movie stars Keanu Reeves as a troubled hero trying to earn his way to heaven by fighting off demons on Earth. Constantine received a mix reaction from critics, scoring a 48% on the Tomatometer. Although that socre is nothing cheer about, it is better than his previous film The Matrix Revolutions, which scored an even more Rotten 36%. It’s also this week’s best reviewed film in wide release. Critics thought the film had an “fascinating” premise and “spellbinding” visuals; they just wish the “bottom feeding” writing could be better and the premise more thoroughly explored.
For parents looking for gentler fare to bring their kids to, there is “Because of Winn Dixie,” based on the bestselling novel about the relationship between a lonely girl and her dog. This also received a mix reaction from critics, scoring 45% on the Tomatometer. Directed by the master of sob Wayne Wang (Joy Luck Club), critics thought that although the film is sometimes sweet and touching, it is nonetheless formulaic and bland.
Critics might be split on “Constantine” and “Because of Winn Dixie”, but they’re unanimous in their position on “Son of the Mask,” the Jim Carrey-less sequel to the 1994 critical and box office hit The Mask. “Son of the Mask” scored a perfect 0% on the Tomatometer, possibly the worst reviewed film of the year. Parents looking for something to bring their kids to must avoid this effects-driven comedy. Critics thought the film was “physically painful to watch” and the experience “agonizing,” “numbing,” and like “a swift, hard kick to the family jewels.”
